Two reviews share today’s Gusher Award for over-the-top praise in book reviews:
From a review of Marisa Silver’s Alone With You: Stories in the New York Times Book Review on June 6, 2010:
“Miraculously, Silver makes philandering Burton sympathetic even as she compassionately conveys the ambivalence Julia feels, at once insulted and relieved by her husband’s infidelity.”
From a review of Julie Orringer’s The Invisible Bridge in the Oregonian on June 26, 2010:
“No less miraculous, however, are the tools by which Orringer builds these connections: Her writing is glorious, at times awe-inspiring.”
Makes you wonder if the pages of these books were printed on the Shroud of Turin, doesn’t it? Memo to critics tempted to use “miraculous” in future reviews: Why not save it for times when a plane lands on the Hudson instead of squandering it on smooth transitions between paragraphs?
Gusher Awards appear on Fridays except when no sentence or paragraph was too inflationary to qualify. These prizes may recognize types of overheated praise other than hyperbole, such as gonzo metaphors. If you’d like nominate an a candidate, please send an e-mail note to the address on the “Contact” page.
You can also follow Jan Harayda on Twitter at www.twitter.com/janiceharayda.
© 2010 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
Junot Díaz has won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead). Other books that won prizes in the March 6 ceremony in Manhattan are: General nonfiction, Harriet Washington’s Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans From Colonial Times to the Present (Doubleday); Biography, Tim Jeal’s Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer (Yale University Press); Autobiography, Edwidge Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying (Knopf); Poetry, Mary Jo Bang’s Elegy (Graywolf); and Criticism, Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).The NBCC awards are one of the top three literary honors in the U.S. along with the National Book Awards and the Pulitzer Prizes. They are given annually by the 800-member association of American book critics.
Your Sunday book section review section might have stopped reviewing poetry during the Carter administration. But if it doesn’t have suggestions, the National Book Critics Circle does. The NBCC polled its members and came up with a list of five of their favorite recent poetry titles, posted at 
